Electric cars are fast, fun and environmentally-friendly

It must have been round about 7.30pm and the traffic on the M40 was not getting any better. Ahead of us stretched the lava flow of red tail lights, and in front of us was a fellow doing a quite unconscionable speed in a BMW 4×4. When I say it was unconscionable, I mean it was unconscionably slow. Come on, Grandma, I yelled at his rump. Some of us have places to go, people to see, columns to write.

But on he plodded, no doubt picking his nose, and altogether showing a sublime indifference to the number one law of the British motorway – that the national speed limit of 70 mph is more honoured in the breach than the observance. At length I could take it no more. It was time to leave this dawdler behind.

Indicating carefully, and in full conformity with the law, I put my foot down – and pow. It was warp drive. You remember that bit in Star Wars, when the Millennium Falcon makes the leap into hyperspace, and the stars are turned into white streaks?

That’s the kind of acceleration we are talking about. My passenger and I were blapped back into our seats like fighter pilots. We shot past the nose-picking BMW, and in that brief moment of ecstasy I was reminded of some of the vital statistics of the machine.

The car I was driving has more grunt off the blocks than a Ferrari Maranello. It has the same acceleration as a Porsche 911, in that it can go from 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds, roughly the time it takes for you to read and absorb the sensational meaning of this sentence.

It’s not just that it has fantastic quantities of torque, the name we use for the twisty physical force that turns an axle. It is unlike a normal car, in that you don’t need to produce fresh bursts of torque by working the gears and the throttle. It has 100 per cent torque at 0 mph, and then whips those wheels round faster and faster in a seamless progression of energy.

So, whoosh, we overtook the BMW and discreetly, legally, we settled in front of him like an insolent snowflake – and what did he observe about the machine that had so elegantly shown him up? He saw the raking contours of a 150 mph king of the road, with a wide flaring bonnet, and soaring wheel arches curved and massed like the haunches of a greased panther. He saw the way it handled, shifting from lane to lane as if suspended from a steel rail.

But as he goggled in stupefaction at the back of our car, there was one thing, my friends, that he did not see. There is something that protrudes from the rear end of every Porsche, every Lamborghini, and every Ford Focus, and which this car does not possess.

It has no exhaust pipe. It has no carburettor, and it has no fuel tank, and while every other car on that motorway was a-parping and a-puttering, filling the air with fumes and particulates, this car was producing no more noxious vapours than a dandelion in an alpine meadow.

As far as the eye could see there were cars roaring and groaning and belching, and no matter how tightly they drew the curtains, and no matter how loud they turned up the television, there were people in living rooms for miles around whose lives were filled with the noise of billions of tiny explosions, as the fossilised remnants of ancient forests were detonated in the cylinders of internal combustion engines.

My car, on the other hand, was silent except for a musical hum, like a chorister tuning up for a madrigal. Every other car on the M40 was guilty – yes, even the Priuses – of contributing directly to the great billowing clouds of CO2 that are rising and quilting the planet in the tea-cosy of doom.

My car was innocent. It was an electric car, made by Tesla in California, and though it is currently just about the only one on British roads, I believe it marks the beginning of a long-overdue revolution.

I remember about 15 years ago my old chum Radek Sikorski wrote a rather brilliant piece. He’d just come across this new way of communicating, by which you could send messages to people at their personal addresses on what we then called the information superhighway.

It was called email, he said, and he was sure there was something in it. He was right, and having driven the Tesla I have something like the same sense of revelation. Of course this is not new technology, but electric cars have evidently reached a point of development where they are now in serious competition with conventional machines. And the best thing is that with all the computers and sensors they have now, they are easier to check, you just need the right car obd scanner, a little bit of research and you find obd II reviews here to select the best one.

Yes, there is carbon dioxide produced in the generation of the electricity – but only about a quarter of the CO2 produced by a similar sports car. If we used nuclear or other low-carbon power sources, we could achieve spectacular reductions in vehicular CO2.

Yes, the batteries are bulky, and electric cars are still expensive. But the batteries are becoming ever smaller and the price of the cars is coming down; and even in a Tesla, a high-performance sports car, you can drive 200 miles for the price of a cup of coffee, and then just plug it in to recharge.

Imagine the lagoon of petrol you buy over the lifetime of the internal combustion engine, and think of the saving you make by going electric. Yes, the Tesla is made in California. But shouldn’t we be making similar batteries and cars in this country?

What this car shows is the vital importance of technological optimism. We can produce solutions that allow people to drive fast, and have fun, and overhaul the slowcoaches – and still save the planet. Many green ideologues will not like that idea. They will instinctively prefer a reduction in consumption, and no fast cars at all.

They should remember that they are dealing with the human race, which is essentially a fun-loving, consumerist species, and that sometimes the best way to make people green is to make them green with envy.

[First published in the Daily Telegraph on 10 March 2009 under the heading, “How to drive fast, have a good time – and still save the planet”]

57 thoughts on “Electric cars are fast, fun and environmentally-friendly”

Great to read this in the Telegraph this morning. I believe the future of personal transport is the electric car and Renault Nissan in collaboration with a company called A Better Place are presently working in Denmark and Israel to put in a new infrastructure to enable people to run electric cars and ‘refill’ their batteries on an almost instant swap over over, just like filling with petrol or diesel. Can I direct people’s attention to http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/11/a-conversation-with-shai-agass.html which I found mind blowing.

Its hard to imagine that Boris doesn’t already know about this new technology, but if he doesn’t, I am pleased to bring it to his attention.

Hello,
we are researching biofuels and have noticed your plans to produce hydogen fuelled buses and cars. We think that this is a good idea and would like to know why you aren’t funding it more?
Fran and James

[Ed: Boris is in Cannes at the moment and unable to respond as he’s delivering lots of speeches and shaking lots of hands with not a keyboard in sight. Your comment has been noted and has been sent on. Keep thinking and challenging!]

If everybody bought an electric car, we would need several new power stations and we would have to dig up many of our roads to lay more electric cables. It could be worth doing, but we’d need to plan it early, because planning and executing major public works isn’t always our strong suit.

Boris, if you saw the Top Gear road test of the Tesla you would not be so full of praise! They ran out of power within an hour and recharge takes 16 hours!. Battery cars are also very difficult to break up after a short life, batteries do not last too many recharge cycles, with many heavy metals to recycle! They also lug about a ton of batteries, not a thing to make them efficient. You will only hear the best side from the manufacturers and the truth is hard to find from them!
If I wanted to drive to my daughter in Spain in a Tesla it would take 7 days/6nights with limited luggage space. Cost out of this world. My present trips in a LR Discovery- 2 nights and 600 miles between tankfulls. I know what I would prefer.

I thought i would email to say i will never vote for you again,calling for an amnesty for illegal immigrants is outrageous,talk about selling the true british down the swanee,they are criminals,they came here illegally that makes them criminals,where are they going to live and work Mr Mayor living in your ivory tower.Our country has already become a lawless cesspit,you are now wanting to add to it,thanks for absolutely betraying the decent hardworking law abiding people of our dead country.In future it,s the BNP for me.

Fantastic article! I’m terribly terribly jealous that I haven’t been able to drive the Tesla yet, so I’m living vicariously through others who kindly share their experiences.

To comment on what John Marshall wrote above, technology is always shifting and changing. Electric cars have great potential, and it would be silly to dismiss them just for the reasons you listed. Sure there may be limitations now, but that’s true with all new technology. Give it some time and keep an open mind. Cars as we now know them were once inordinately slow and problematic too, but we thankfully stuck with them instead of going back to the horse and buggy.

To Robert Taylor: Do you really think Boris cares whether you vote for him or not with that attitude? And please, do learn how to punctuate your sentences properly as your commas in lieu of periods detract utterly from your message.

is it beyond comprehension, to devise a device that works in the same way an alternator works, on electric cars?

with the option to plug in and charge up as well as using the kinetic energy of the car travelling to charge up, would this not negate the problem with charging and big batteries carrying extra weight etc?

its a shame we dont have engineers working with british car manufacturers up and down the UK giving people an alternative option, and who knows, we might even sell the odd one or two abroad?

From one who lives within earshot of a motorway, a point about the noise. Much of it on motorways these days is made by the tyres more than the engines and I dont suppose the Tesla, through no fault of its own, is any quieter on tyres.

I was amused at the article … though I personally subscribe to a methanol future.

To digress slightly, I would like to address transportation issues in general. I have never understood the attitude of succesive governments towards the car in this country. In principle, surely there can nothing wrong with people using this form of transport for leisure and work. Though public transport should be encouraged, there is only so much that this can achieve … especially in a rural setting. Surely, as you allude, the problem is with the Internal Combustion Engine. We need a government that understands the difference and promotes technologies that eliminate pollution and climate problems. So how come car use is frowned upon and petrol is taxed at pernicious levels? We need to come of oil … but we cannot strangle ourselves in the process. How come we spend so much money decorating roads with sleeping policemen, chicanes, and other impedimenta when in fact we should be facilitating traffic flow? Don’t we know that stopping and starting wastes energy, causes pollution and unnecessary wear to cars? How about making sure that in every road in the country cars can pass easily unimpeded? How about making bus stops with pull in areas so that rush hour traffic is not restricted to following the bus? How about allowing cars to turn left on a red traffic signal as they do in other countries? How about removing pedestrian signals and replacing with the more efficient Belisha beacon?

These simple remedies seem to allude the authorities who seem hell bent on curtailing personal car use. Let us not hope that this trend does not carry across to air transport when nations sink into a new era of xenophobia.

Dear Boris
Electric vehicles just move the CO2 emissions from the vehicle to the site of electrical generation. It takes a specific amount of energy to propel a vehicle of a specific weight a particular distance and the energy required is the same whether it is from petrol, diesel or electricity.
If the vehicles are battery driven they are likely to be heavier than a similar standard vehicle and would therefore require MORE energy to be used for the same distance.
If we all plug our electric vehicles in overnight the power stations will be on full load 24 hours a day increasing the resultant pollution.
Wind power will not be the answer. Last December, the coldest start to a Winter for many years, it was totally windlass for about two weeks, under the influence of a high pressure area. Where will the power come from for all the requirements of heating, lighting AND recharging all your “quadracycles”.

Don’t get me wrong. Ordinary Muslims are OK. But I don’t have time for these Muslim fanatics. Not at all.

Look at the burka-wearing fanatics! I just imagine back in their own countries these ( and the bearded Muslim fanatics ! ) are the ones who stoned adulterers to death ( and their Mula law says their men are allowed to marry as many women as they like as long as they can support them all ? ! )

The ones living in UK make many Mula women pregnant, giving birth to lots of children and then they all claim social benefits ( that’s our taxpayers’ money !!! ).

AS LONG AS THEY CAN SUPPORT THEIR WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN MY ASS !! SHAME ON YOU MAD MULAS !!!! BACON AND PORK FOR YOU ALL !!!

Yes, we’ve had long debates on the problems that occurred in Luton on f***france.com. I’m not going to continue on Boris’s site, that subject. Battery cars…seems the batteries expire fairly quickly and are very expensive to replace. For instance, if you are a clown and own a dead G-Wizz, or whatever it’s called, you may as well scrap it. The pollution from batteries, the energy required to make them in the first place: well, electric cars are a farce. Hydrogen is the way to go. Meanwhile I will stick with my 10year old Matiz for visits to the town, and my Citroen diesel for my 1000mile door to door visits to my son and family. We have a long way to go, yet. By the way, Boris, the bike scheme is not going very well in Paris. Half of them have been nicked or vandalised. Not good, old chap!

More hot air from Boris
In his official register of gifts, the mayor of London records the loan of an electric sports car from US company Tesla and in last Tuesday’s Telegraph came payback. Under the headline “How to drive fast, have a good time – and still save the planet”, Boris Johnson, (paid £250,000 a year as a columnist) enthuses: “Every other car on the M40 was guilty – yes, even the Priuses – of contributing directly to the great billowing clouds of CO2 that are rising and quilting the planet in the tea cosy of doom. My car was innocent … yes, there is carbon dioxide produced in the generation of the electricity – but only about a quarter of the CO2 produced by a similar sports car.”

Really? According to the Carbon Trust, grid electricity (as currently used to charge an electric car) releases approximately 0.537kg of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour, compared with 0.25kg from diesel and 0.24kg from petrol. Parp! Parp!

A cock Muslim who called British soldiers ‘criminals’ has had his house’s windows and doors smashed. He complained to cops who sent 2 cops in a car to guard his house since Saturday 14 March for his safety.

An angry local English man protested: ‘ I had my shed broken into and my bike stolen. I phoned the same cops who did f**k-all. ‘

According to the Policy Exchange think tank’s report, taxpayers’ money has been handed to hardline terror promoting Islamist groups in the UK despite Labour Ministers saying that the fund would help stop Muslims being brainwashed by hate preachers.

Dear Boris, I have a plan to introduce electric car sharing to London that would use renewable energy to charge the cars making it a zero emission system. The only emissions created would be in manufacturing the equipment, but the operating of the system would be completely carbon neutral. I have tried emailing you the plans and i hope you can have a look at some point, if you or one of your team would like to see them again please let me know.

Great article, Boris, I am really interested in this idea. I am a Student of London College of Communication, studying design, and for my final major project I have decided to design the charging points around London for the electric car hire proposal. I would really love to know more information, for example the figures (how many cars would be rentable in London) and the suggested budget. If I could get some of this information from you this would help me so much.

Boris is mistaken: the car he drove was actually built right here in Britain. I know because I test drove it immediately before Boris, and it had arrived that morning fresh from the Lotus factory at Hethel near Norwich. Lotus builds the cars (based significantly in their mechanical design) for Tesla. Tesla has developed and supplies the electronics, battery pack (made of of thousands of laptop batteries) and electric motor. For UK cars the integration happens 100% in the UK. And UK manufacturers like Ginetta, Stevens, Smiths, Liberty e-cars, Modec and Lotus themselves (with their own EV plans) are all getting in on the electric vehicle space with offerings as varied as city cars, sports cars and electric delivery trucks (on our streets today for Tesco, TNT and other major brands).

Boris is also right! The Tesla Roadster drives like a rocket. It’s hugely fun. It’s also very green. If you subscribe to a real green electricity tarrif at home like Good Energy you can drive it with 0g CO2/km ie emission free, zero carbon (and for that matter zero sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter aka soot, etc – which matters if you care about air quality and health). Even on the average brown electricity in the UK it’s about as clean as a Prius (but it doesn’t drive like one!) One commenter above clearly fails to distinguish between the energy content of fuels and the fraction of that energy content delivered to the wheels. In an internal combustion car its likely around 20% – in a sports car less than 10%. Whereas around 80-90% of the electric energy going into the tesla ends up driving the car. Put differently a typical EV uses 0.25 kWh/mile (even the Tesla, official average from tye US EPA 0.217 kWh/mile – the best are as low as under 0.1kWh/mile) which means around 125g of CO2/mile or 80g/km. The best petrol cars today officially get around 100g/km. But that ignores the energy used (and CO2 emitted) in extracting oil from the ground and refining it – for that add about 20%. So best petrol or diesel cars around 120g CO2/km “well to wheels”; worst EV (sports car!) 80g CO2/km – or zero g if you pay a fraction more and buy green electricity. (Sports car to sports car comparison: Boris is right or conservative at 4:1 advantage for electric.) Oh and don’t worry about the extra electric cost – “expensive” green electricity at 15p/kWh = 4p/mile; petrol at 90p/litre = £4/gal = 20p/mile for a 20 mpg sports car. Don’t trust me on this – lots of “well to wheel” analysis out there that comes to the same conclusion: electric vehicles are greener.

1. I left incomplete that the Tesla chassis, suspension and body were designed by Lotus for Tesla based on the Lotus Elise, though they now have less than 10% commonality of parts. Lotus has a large business designing and low volume manufacturing under such arrangements.
2. My analysis of Carbon Footprints mixed US and European drive cycles. Since they vary quite a bit (e.g. Prius is listed in the UK at 109g CO2/km, whereas fueleconomy.gov in the US shows 151g CO2/km – this is because it uses a more realistic drive cycle that accords better with real driver results on miles per gallon and emissions). Since the Tesla Roadster has been testes against this US EPA cycle, a fairer comparison is to use the US data to compare the Tesla Roadster against the Lotus Elise S (which doesn’t achieve quite as good acceleration at over 4 seconds vs the Tesla’s under 4 but closest available comparison car) using data from fueleconomy.gov, although assuming UK grid electricity at around 537g/kWh as quoted above.

Over 5:1 i.e. On a Well to Wheels basis the Tesla emits less than 20% of the CO2 of a Lotus Elise S.

Also note that an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car never gets less emitting through it’s life. Likely age and maintenance issues will make it get worse.

Whereas over the next 20 years or so the UK is planning to reduce the CO2 intensity of our electric grid ten-fold down to 50g CO2/kWh by massive level of Renewables (mostly offshore wind). So every year the Tesla Roadster bought today and kept until then, charging from average UK grid power (not a green tarrif) reduces it’s CO2 emissions until in around 20 years it’s at around 7g CO2/km (10% of today and at least 50 times better than a Lotus Elise S bought today and kept until then which if in tip-top shape is still emitting 314 g/km plus at least 20% well to pump – no-one thinks oil will get easier to extract so that part is likely to rise).

If anyone is interested I can do the same analysis showing the Tesla Roadster against your choice of super-efficient ICE car e.g. Sports Car vs Prius. I bet the Tesla is lower CO2 by quite a margin today and over 10 times better after the grid is de-carbonized!

Andrew, an interesting set of stats and the Tesla certainly does seem to have cheered up the car market. No more industry sackcloth-n-ashes or model-specific reward-flowers for driving well (Honda, the car is good but that’s a school-ma’am too far). Now all I need is Tesla technology in an affordable car that will do 600 miles in a day (or none), is comfortable and will do the weekly supermarket shop as well as transport the computer and the iPod, that I can see out of backwards as well as forwards, is enduringly stylish rather than this season’s fashion accessory and, most important, is mechanically reliable. Ideas welcome.

The vital figure you missed out is how many kwH of energy is needed to
propel a petrol car (or indeed a hybrid) vs an all electric for a
standard mile. Electric cars are far more efficient than their gas
burning cousins.

Nice one Boris!
I was distressed when Erni Marples introduced ‘Parking Metres!’ He certainly missed a trick then! These should have been charging points. I sincerely hope you have better success with this wasteful government.

A few points to consider! Can electric cars survive floods? How much power is required to keep the ice off windscreens and hands in winter? And how safe are they on a failing battery for night vision and safety? Philip

To correct another post further up, the batteries are not the same as most EV cars. Prius etc use Lead acid batteries which are very heavy and both lead and the acid used are bad for the environment. The Tesla uses Lithium-ion batteries which are lighter (less weight to move around) and can be recycled (in fact Tesla already has the battery recycling in place for the car). The batteries should be good for 100,000 miles.

As for range I only get about 220 miles from my Lotus Elise as it has a small tank. The Tesla roadster has a range of 244 miles.

I loved Boris Johnson’s article (first published in the Daily Telegraph on 10 March 2009). Speaking as a come lately journalist I can only wish I had his writing style. His similies: “we settled in front of him like an insolent snowflake.” . . .”this car was producing no more noxious vapours than a dandelion in an alpine meadow.” . . .
“soaring wheel arches curved and massed like the haunches of a greased panther.” . . . “My car, on the other hand, was silent except for a musical hum, like a chorister tuning up for a madrigal.” What joy to read. What imagery!
Yes, I love the Tesla too. It is the future today. Best wishes, Guy Peters

Interesting really that electric cars currently produce more CO2 emissions than diesel cars…electric car efficiency is currently about 24% from electric production to wheel, whereas diesels average 45%, with petrols lagging in the 15-20% region.

So go green go diesel…strange isn’t it, in fact you should probably look at a car built from recycled materials as well to reduce your carbon emissions, so probably your best bet is an S-Class Mercedes Diesel which is far less environmentally damaging that most electric cars!

If the government were to provide the £5000 subsidy they do for electrics to diesels CO2 emissions in the UK would fall significantly, with electric cars however, it is liable to rise!